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Got Swine Flu? We didn't.

By Jen A. Miller

The public health scare of the decade
may have passed, but when H1N1
exploded on the radar screen in
spring 2009, no one knew what to
expect. University of the Sciences formed a
response team to start planning what to do
should swine flu come to campus.

“We’re a health science institution, and we
needed to utilize best practices to respond
to a health need on campus,” said William Cunningham, PhD, dean of students.

The University used what could have been
a disaster as a cross-disciplinary teachable
moment that gave students hands-on experience
in dealing with a real health emergency.

First concern was keeping faculty, staff, and
students healthy. The second was spring 2009
graduation. Once the spring panic ebbed and
the team realized that H1N1 was going to be a
persistent threat, they created a plan should it
spread across campus and a plan to vaccinate
as many students as possible.

“A lot of sick students would have brought
the institution to a halt.”

The response team came up with a
multipronged program that involved:

Raising awareness of the need to be
vaccinated, especially for students under
24 and students who already worked in
healthcare.

Raising awareness of measures that could
prevent the spread of H1N1, such as regular
hand washing and self-isolating if experiencing
flu-like symptoms.

Preparing a system that would vaccinate
as many people as possible when doses
became available—a day that the response
team didn’t know because the City of
Philadelphia could not give solid dates
when the vaccine would be delivered.

“One of the most important techniques we
used was viral marketing,” said Melanie Oates, PhD, former director of the undergraduate
business program. “Our target
market—young people—responds much
more to word-of-mouth marketing and to
Internet social marketing.”

Her students created t-shirts with slogans
like “Got Swine Flu? I don’t. Get vaccinated.”
on them. Marketing students wore them
around campus and sold them for $5 each,
the cost of which was subsidized by Student
Affairs and SHAC. They also blanketed
University-affiliated Facebook student
and group pages with information about
why students needed to be vaccinated.

As soon as vaccines were made available,
the response team set up a vaccination clinic
in the Athletic/Recreation Center. Student
volunteers helped with everything from
getting the word out to dose preparation,
while trained faculty from Philadelphia
College of Pharmacy administered
the shots.

“The key was we did a lot of prep work,”
said Bernard D. Gollotti, executive
director of public safety and security.
“We started with the pandemic
preparedness team, who put together
a plan that was executed.”

Through two clinics, over 1,100 people were
given vaccinations. The University vaccinated
30 percent of its students, more than triple
the national average, which put the University
in a good position had a third wave of H1N1
come around as feared.